White Center Now: The blog about White Center

If you know someone who is not registered or who may have fallen off the voting rolls, bring them by Saturday or Sunday afternoon after 2 p.m. at Cafe Rozella as we will be hosting a voter registration drive.  No need to mince words here, the issues at stake could not be higher:  war, civil rights, economic collapse and a cool trillion for Wall Street just to hit the high low marks.  Drag your neighbor, your cousin or boyfriend/girlfriend and get them signed up so they can exercise their citizenship rights obligations!  Cafe Rozella is at 9434 Delridge Way SW (just north of Roxbury and Delridge).  Phone (206) 763-5805.

Just in. Someone stole the Village Green sign from the corner of Roxbury Ave. SW and 26th Ave. SW (Safeway block). The sign chained to the tree and whoever took it SAWED off the leg and Stole the sign.

If anyone sees a sign around – probably lying on the side of the road somewhere…or being reused as a ‘newly made over’ sign- please contact Vera at Village Green. These signs are not cheap and for a small business owner it’s quite a hit (speaking from experience). Someone also had to have seen this event take place…sawing wood takes a minute or two… Contact for Vera at Village Green Perennial Nursery
10223 26th Ave SW
Seattle Wa. 98146
206-767-7735

Anyone seeing the sign or the person(s) who took it, please call!

That’s Patricia Julio, neighborhood-revitalization director for White Center Community Development Association<, at last night’s Highland Park Action Committee meeting; she and WCCDA’s neighborhood-revitalization program manager David Daw were there to update HPAC on some of the many things WCCDA is up to, including the latest on the Cultural Center at St. James Place, and revitalization work in the WC business district — here are the toplines: Read the rest of this entry »

Just received this announcement – note it’s for an event this weekend as well as a call for playwright participation in an event next month:

The White Center Arts Alliance and DramaQueen Theatre are co-sponsoring a White Center “Future of the Arts” community planning meeting and visioning session on Sunday, September 28th from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. The meeting will be held at the White Center ALL ABOUT ARTS studio space at 9444 17th Ave SW.

White Center artists, community leaders and other interested parties are encouraged to attend. The agenda will focus on the short and long-term future of the arts in the White Center community. Phone Nancy Calos-Nakano at (206) 795-0833 for further details.

Also, looking for local playwrights for Live Theatre Week. 5 playwrights to read and present a 10 minute play will be presented on Oct 16,17,18 at ALL ABOUT ARTS studio space. Novice and seasoned writers should turn in a copy of their work to: Nancy Calos at culturalart@msn.com or Karen Kinch jkkinch@msn.com for details, approval, scheduling and entry. There is a small stipend awarded to the writer. Women Writers from all backgrounds are encouraged to enter. Event is called “The Rivers that We Carry – Voices from West of the Duwamish”

Disclosure, I was a Blue Bird, which is what a young Camp Fire member used to be called, back when dinosaurs walked the earth. So I’ve got nostalgic warmth for the Camp Fire USA organization, which was Camp Fire Girls way back then, but welcomes boys as well as girls these days. Here’s the announcement that registration is under way in our area: Read the rest of this entry »

The long-closed roller link has been rebranded as the Southgate Event Center (website here), with a weekend swap meet starting October 4th-5th.

Lots going on this week and three to remind you about for starters: The North Highline Fire District commissioners’ regular bimonthly meeting is 8 am tomorrow at district HQ; then at 8 Wednesday morning, it’s the special meeting with Seattle reps re: annexation issues, as announced at the last NHFD commissioners’ meeting. Thursday night, the White Center/South Delridge Community Safety Coalition meeting starts at 6 at St. James Place – tons of important info at these meetings every month, and free dinner too. See you there!

Here and elsewhere, lots of people spread the word about Cupcakes for Cora, a fundraiser this afternoon in West Seattle on behalf of a 4-year-old cancer patient with ties to the White Center community too. We just posted a report, with video of Cora, on partner site WSB; see it here.

While checking the Highland Park Action Committee website in advance of HPAC’s next meeting tomorrow night (they’re the West Seattle community group closest to White Center, and also leading the fight against the two closest proposed city-jail sites, but they are tackling other issues too) – we were reminded that the site has a great page from the 7/31 meeting about the White Center Cultural Center plans. That was a week before White Center Now was launched, and we unfortunately weren’t at that meeting, but photos and part of the presentation, including the site plans, can be found here.

Announced by U.S. Senator Patty Murray’s office (read the announcement here): $20 million in federal funds confirmed for the King County Housing Authority’s Park Lake II redevelopment project. Murray says the White House had tried to cut the HOPE VI funding that included this money. Here’s a financial breakdown of the nearly $200 million going into Greenbridge. UPDATE: Per comments, King County notes that this portion of Park Lake redevelopment is for a project separate from Greenbridge.

Thank you for starting and participating in lively discussions here on WCN, right from the start. Couple things we wanted to highlight this afternoon — First: Spirited discussions continue on threads that are now weeks old – so keep checking, if those are topics you’re interested in. In particular, our coverage of the last North Highline Fire District meeting is still drawing comments – including this one, just this morning, from “Concerned Firefighter.”

Second: Dick Thurnau from Friends of Hicks Lake just announced an event in comments on an “old” post. Before publishing it here to make sure everyone sees it, I wanted to note – if you’ve got something to announce – best thing to do is try one of these:
a) Send it to us and we’ll post: whitecenternow@gmail.com
b) Want to be a White Center Now contributor? This is a multi-contributor site – FullTilt, Ricardo, and I are the trio that launched it, but we’ve always hoped to have other participants. E-mail us at that same address, whitecenternow@gmail.com, and let us know what you’d like to write about, in general.

Now, the Hicks Lake event that Dick wants you to know about (also just added to the White Center Now Events Calendar):

Friends of Hicks Lake will sponsor and cooperate with KC Parks Evergreen Maintenance Dist for a cleanup day: On Saturday 9/27/2008 from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM at Lakewood Park/ Hicks Lake.
Tools, gloves will be furnished — all we need is volunteers as there is a lot of work that needs to be accomplished. Students from Seattle Pacific University come annually.

This is an invite for all residents of North Highline to make a difference. Thank you in advance.
Dick Thurnau 206-244-4558

Click pic to play video

As you’ll see in the video, this show was even more for the eyes and the ears … and the whole body, really. Check No-Fi Soul Rebellion’s website here.

FullTilt himself hasn’t mentioned it yet so I will: Lots of writeups for the fact a hot group’s coming to the ice cream shop at 9 pm tonight – No-Fi Soul Rebellion. Here’s just one of the videos we found on YouTube; love the tie. We hope to drop in to get some of tonight’s event on-cam; check back here late tonight or tomorrow.

Dreaming of a future White Center Farmers’ Market is part of what the PARKing Day “park” is all about. Till 3 pm, you can see the “park” set up by White Center Community Development Association and Technology Access Foundation — with that banner, some greenery, fresh produce, and of course, technology — in the parking spaces by Full Tilt Ice Cream on 16th SW, west side of the street, a short ways south of Roxbury. Staffing the “park” when we stopped by a short time ago — WCCDA’s Sopha Danh and TAF’s Richard Brown:

TAF is also promoting its free TechStart classes – all listed on this handy white board at today’s “park”:

PARKing Day is happening nationwide – with people setting up temporary “parks” like this one to remind us that urban greenspace is vital to healthy, happy city living (among other things!).

Note, it’s from the Obama campaign site, so you might not want to help if you’re supporting another candidate, but it’s a request for volunteers to help sign up voters at sites including Roxbury Safeway. Check it out here. (It’s also posted on our partner site, West Seattle Blog.) Meantime, if you still need to register, the deadline is two weeks from Saturday, and you can start at this page on the King County website.

7 pm tonight, at St. Bernadette’s (map), the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council hopes you’ll join its members for a community meeting to discuss annexation, among other things.

WestSide Baby, which is headquartered in White Center and helps families here as well as West Seattle and environs, just put out an urgent call for newborn-size diapers – those shelves are bare! WestSide Baby collects diapers at its headquarters (10032 15th SW) as well as several other West Seattle locations and even one in Burien; full list is here.

Tall Latte at Half-Price – Rush Hour Special 6:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.\

Weary commuters, we know what a grind it is to get in your car and join the mad rush to that beloved job. So Cafe Rozella wants to make your commute a little easier. Pull up to Cafe Rozella, jump out of your car and get a tall latte for half the usual price! Just come in before 7:30 am and say, “I want my commuter special!” While supplies last.
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Keep up on current affairs and latest White Center developments at the WC blog: whitecenternow.com

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Freebie 2.0 download of the day. If you are like me, as you work at your computer, either on the web or while writing, you run into stuff that you want to save for later or merely want to have around for later use (like a software key, an address or a phone number). If you use gmail, you could email it to yourself but that has its limits. Well there is a tremendous freeware download called Evernote that allows you to record, save, copy and generally memorialize anything on your PC and best of all it syncs with all your computers so if you save something on your laptop while surfing at Cafe Rozella it will be in your Evernote clipboard in your home desktop. The download can be found at: Evernote download.

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News and Views:

Get to know potential President Sarah Palin

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Upcoming Events

That shelf of quirky collectibles (if you’re over 40 like me, the lunchboxes may strike a note of nostalgia!) graces the office of Mount View Elementary‘s new principal Mark Demick, who says they’re just items he’s picked up “along the way.” And what a way it’s been, bringing him from his first teaching job in the farming community of Delano, California — where parent/teacher conferences were sometimes held at vineyard worksites – to this new role in White Center. Read on to find out more about him, why he’s excited about the job, and what he hopes to do: Read the rest of this entry »

(update: here’s a link to a map of all Friday’s PARKing Day “Parks” citywide)
Perhaps you’ve heard of PARKing Day – a relatively new annual event in which volunteers in cities nationwide transform parking spaces into parks, to spotlight the importance of urban open space. This year’s edition is coming up on Friday, and there’s going to be a PARKing Day “park” in a prominent White Center spot – here’s the official announcement:

Seattle Parks Foundation is partnering with The Trust for Public Land and Feet First to turn Seattle’s parking spaces into parks on September 19th as part of PARK(ing) Day, a fun and visible event started by Re-Bar in San Francisco to bring attention to the need for more green space in urban areas.

Technology Access Foundation and The White Center Community Development Association will be transforming the parking spaces in front of Full Tilt Ice Cream into a classroom. We are hoping to provide awareness to the community about the work that we do. Everyone is invited to come out and show support to the community.

National Parking Day
Friday, September 19
10:00 am – 3:00 pm

In front of:
Full Tilt Ice Cream
9629 16th Ave SW

Come out and meet your community neighbors!
For More info call – 206-722-2369×102